Personal Archiving/Personal Papers
The ETH Zurich University Archives are interested in collecting personal documents and data (personal papers) from faculty at ETH Zurich.
Professors approaching retirement are kindly requested to contact the ETH Zurich University Archives as early as possible. The services of the ETH Zurich University Archives are also part of the retirement process accompanied by the Office for Faculty Affairs.
Retired professors as well as families of deceased faculty members are also invited to contact the ETH Zurich University Archives.
The ETH Zurich University Archives are particularly interested in the following documents
- Correspondence (e-mails, letters) with peers
- Notebooks, lab journals, travel journals, diaries, autobiographical texts
- Documentation on important research projects
- Expert reports commissioned by ETH members or external principals
- Unpublished manuscripts
- Presentations, lectures, talks
- CV, list of publications, job references
- Photographs, slides and videos documenting research activities. Here, we work closely with our colleagues of the Image Archive.
The ETH Zurich University Archives do not collect the following documents
- Publications and copies of publications
- Reprints, preprints, postprints
- Early versions of manuscripts which were published later (only archived in exceptional cases)
- Accounting documents and receipts
- Dissertations and reports by dissertation supervisors at ETH Zurich (these are collected by the ETH administration)
The ETH University Archives collect both paper documents and digital data. In order to guarantee long-term preservation of data we closely work together with our colleagues from the Digital Curation Office.
Transferring Personal Papers to the Archives
If you would like to donate documents or data to the ETH Zurich University Archives, please create a summary list of your personal papers. This list serves as the basis for the decision-making process that determines which documents and data are worth archiving and which are not. A Download template for this list (DOCX, 26 KB) is available for download (German only).
Archivists of the ETH University Archives pay visits to faculty members in their offices at ETH Zurich or, in exceptional cases, in their private offices. The ETH Zurich University Archives organise the secure transport of documents within Switzerland.
The terms and conditions under which personal papers are made accessible to the public are specified in a donation agreement.
